Category Archives: Business

“I Simply Do Not Know Where The Money Is”

Question:

Why should we believe that the motives of people in (cough, cough) “public service” are different from the motives of people in the for-profit sector? Was Jon Corzine a rapacious self-seeker at Goldman Sachs, then a public-spirited man when he was in the Senate and in New Jersey’s governorship, only to revert to form when he went to MF Global? If you doubt that this is true, and suspect that Jon Corzine was the same guy all along, why would you want to give government more power?

It’s a question that big-government supporters never answer. Partly because when it’s a John Corzine or a John Edwards, it’s not that big a deal. If either had been a Republican, it would have been second-coming type in the New York Times.

The Founders wrote a constitution on the basis that men are not angels, but “liberals” apparently believe that when they call themselves “liberal” and Democrats that they are, and will rule us wisely.

Keystone Question

I haven’t studied this in detail, but my dim understanding is that the objection is to potential environmental impacts to the Ogallala Aquifer (that’s the official objection — we all know that the eco-loons real problem with it is that they hate fossil fuels). So why not propose starting the pipeline at the two ends now, at the Canadian border and in Houston, work toward the center, and defer the final routing of that section until they’ve studied it more? If they refuse to do this, we’ll have put the lie to their objection and showed their real agenda.

On The Economic Illiteracy

…of Democrats:

That Democrats are generally illiterate about basic economics is not a matter of mere conjecture. In 2010, Daniel B. Klein and Zeljka Buturovic analyzed answers provided by a random sample of 4,835 Americans to a list of eight questions about economics. The results, which noted the party affiliation of the respondents, were not flattering to our friends on the left. “Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.” And these were not arcane questions. They involved elementary concepts, like the effect of price controls, covered in any Econ 101 course taught at the lowliest community college and even some of the better high schools. Yet the average Democrat respondent got nearly 60 percent of the answers wrong.

It is precisely this kind of ignorance that led so many Democrats to believe Obamacare would somehow render health care less expensive. One of the first items covered in any introductory economics course is that the price of any good or service will rise if the quantity demanded increases without an accompanying increase in the available supply of that commodity. Nonetheless, it held no message for the average Democrat that the supply side of the equation was ignored by “reform,” though it increased the number of patients in the health system as well as the range of services to which they are entitled. The issue of supply and demand was utterly lost on Obamacare’s Democrat supporters. Thus, at the time of its passage, fully 78 percent of them favored the law. Even now, 52 percent still support it.

This is typical of the ignorance that was on full display in the president’s speech the other day.

A Comedian In My Comments Section

Is this you, Frank J.?

If Obama does win re-election, he’ll likely preside over four more years of slow recovery, protect the Affordable Care Act until people get used to its benefits, protect Roe-v-Wade with another court pick or two, and go down in history as the best Democratic president since FDR. Come 2016 we’ll regret the 22nd Amendment.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah…[take a breath]…hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah…

Oh, man, my sides hurt.

Mitten Envy

No, this isn’t about how Romney feels about Newt’s latest poll numbers, but how Wisconsin is trying to abscond with Michigan’s image. I have to admit, though, that it’s pretty funny how she says they point at their hand to show where they live (a long-time lower-peninsula behavior for Wolverines). This calls for a contest to determine just what Wisconsin is actually shaped like. It’s sort of a Rorschach test.